I find Legacy Events invaluable. The name is a bit misleading - I'd prefer "Facts". Basically it is best to record each discrete fact about a person as an "event", rather than in Notes, as I used to do it. The event doesn't have to have a date, or can have a date range (1855-1866) or Abt 1855, or 1855? . The key advantages of using events are:
1. You can assign a source to that event explicitly.
2. You can sort the events so they appear chronologically, or manually if you prefer.
3. A sentence is created from each event to appear in narrative style reports. You have a lot of flexibility over how these sentences are generated.
4. Events form the basis for the excellent Chronology View and Chronology Report (from the Chronology View page), which provide a brilliant summary of an individual's life, complete with little bargraphs showing time relativity if you want them.
5. You can copy events very easily using the event clipboard (e.g. an emigration or residence event that applies to each member of the one family)
6. The dates associated with some types of events can be checked for consistency via the Potential Problems report (although there was a bug in this for Alt. type events; fixed now?)
Once you get used to events they are very flexible, and powerful. I now minimise the use of the general notes, restricting them to general comments about a person's life, for example. I do attach quite detailed notes to individual events, though.
Events that I use are Emigration, Naturalisation, Occupation, Residence, Travelled, Owned Land, Newspaper Letter, Confirmation, Alt. Birth, Alt. Death etc etc.
One proviso. You can create custom event types in Legacy (like "Newspaper Letter" above). These give a lot of flexibility, but apparently don't transfer too well via Gedcom to other programs that may not recognise them. So if this is important to you, take care!
Cheers, Rob
----- Original Message ----- From: "Paula Ryburn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 7:33 AM
Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Advice on events
Mike,
The main events I have been entering are also Residence and Occupation,
typically from census data but also from interviews. I enter Residence
events for Individuals and for Marriages (families). I had to fiddle with
the sentence structure on Occupations, but I'm pretty satisfied with it now.
I also use the various Military and Education/Degree events and have set up
a couple of my own. These latter are mostly in Notes format. For example,
"Comet" -- I saw it the last time it came around, and my grandmother saw it
the time before.
I have been trying to figure out how best to record medical conditions...
events vs. notes. But, since this is only a hobby, I haven't been able to
spend much time testing the output. I did catch a recent post here about
software available from the Surgeon General and will look into that the next
time I have a good chunk of hobby time open! (say, after New Year's??)
--Paula
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Christie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2004 10:24 AM
Subject: [LegacyUG] Advice on events
I would like to get advice on useful ways to use the events in Legacy.
It seems possible to enter an almost infinite amount of data as events, but I'm not sure how useful that would be. Censuses will always show up in the source list, for example; marriage, birth and death will show up as dates. Do people find these useful?
I would like to get residency and occupation information, but it doesn't seem to naturally fit in an event format, and so I currently enter this free-form in the general notes. For example, an ancestor of mine is listed as a carpenter on every source that gives occupation from 1839 to his death in 1894. I suppose I could enter an event that has no date, but gives "Carpenter 1839-1894" in the description field. Similarly for residences; I know of two or three addresses for this ancestor, but not exactly when he moved. Would you enter a separate "Residence" event for each source and date documenting a residence, or instead enter one for each address, giving a range of dates in the description?
Are there any other events that people find useful, and worth the trouble of entering?
Thanks
Mike
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